To get your weekend started right, here are a few updates from the genealogy world:

Starting next year, African-Americans will be able to research their ancestors free in an online genealogy database called AfriQuest.

The genealogy wiki WeRelate and the University of Southern Florida Africana Heritage Project (USAF) are among those behind the project. Researchers will be able to add images and records to the database, too.

According to the press release, "Every record readers add to the database will not only be preserved, but will be available to anyone for free, now and in years to come."

Look for a beta release early next spring. You can help get things off the ground by volunteering to add or index records and manage data. Contact USAF’s Toni Carrier or Dallan Quass of WeRelate.

Members can customize their home pages by picking a layout and adding a photograph and caption, along with information about their research interests. Uploaded photos go into a gallery, which can be public, private or available to family and friends. Users also can make announcements public or private.

Those services are free. For its records, FamilyRelatives offers subscription ($75 per year) and pay-per-view options.

You can use the new app, called We’re Related (no relation to WeRelate), to search your Facebook friends for your relatives. If those relatives also use We’re Related, it'll suggest who among their Facebook friends might be related to you. We’re Related also lets you upload your GEDCOM to your facebook profile.

You can get a little more info on the application and instructions for adding We're Related to your Facebook profile on the World Vital Records blog. It’s the 153rd most popular application on Facebook out of more than 5,000—not too shabby.

“The firm that’s buying our company is buying our vision. They like what we’re doing and they want us to keep doing that,” Sullivan says.

• Sullivan said RootsWeb—the free, grassroots site TGN (then MyFamily.com) purchased in 2000—"is absolutely not going away. We will never charge for what’s on RootsWeb. We’re proud to be supporters of RootsWeb.”

He adds there’s only about a 20 percent overlap between RootsWeb users and Ancestry.com users, a number his company would like to increase.

• Spectrum Equity’s investment in TGN likely won’t change anything at Genealogy.com (anyone remember that site?), which TGN purchased in 2003 and allowed to languish. “We continue to support Genealogy.com, but we did make a decision that in a world of limited resources and limited hours in the day, that the best thing we could do was focus our resources as completely as we could on Ancestry.com.”

• TGN is focused on incorporating new technology, such as wireless photo uploads, into its services, and on globalizing genealogy research. “We just sent someone to China to open an office there and build a Web site for people in China,” Sullivan says.

• A few other upcoming changes to Ancestry.com include a “pretty major” overhaul of the search interface, improved tree-building experience, and of course, more digitized records.

• Sullivan wouldn’t say whether TGN would go public, just that the company’s future holds many possibilities and his staff is taking things one step at a time.

Its domination of the genealogy industry often means TGN is the company people love to hate. Sullivan’s aware of that and says “I promise we don’t sit around thinking of ways to make people angry.”

I asked about his pre-TGN genealogical interest. He knew some oral history, including an ancestor who worked with Thomas Edison. “I, like probably everybody, was enamored and fascinated by the stories of those who preceded me,” he says, but he hadn’t yet done research.

Back when he ran the online dating service Match.com, Sullivan knew TGN’s then-CEO Tom Stockham and thought he’d check out Ancestry.com. “Before I knew it, it was 2:30 in the morning, and I had my laptop in bed showing my wife documents I discovered.”

“It was an instantaneous and very strong fascination, but like a lot of people, I didn’t have a lot of time and I didn’t follow up and get engaged right away.” His company’s challenge, he says, is engaging people like himself at that time, who face busy schedules and many choices for spending spare moments.

“We’re never going to make it easy, push-button genealogy. But we’re getting close to that tipping point, where the investment and the effort people put in, they see a return very quickly in terms of satisfaction.”

Spectrum Equity Investors, already a partial stakeholder in TGN, will pay $300 million for its majority interest. Two of its partners will join TGN president and CEO Tim Sullivan on the new board of directors. Other terms of the purchase weren't disclosed.

Private equity firms buy companies hoping to make money off them, and that’s probably a good bet here. The Generations Network online properties have 900,000 paying subscribers, and receive 8.2 million unique visitors and more than 429 million page views a month. According to the Internet news site TechCrunch, TGN rakes in around $150 million in revenue annually.

Ancestry.com’s DNA Ancestry site has emerged from beta offering Y-DNA and mitochondrial tests (ranging from $149 to $199) and promising Ancestry Member Tree users will soon be able to add their test results to the information in their trees.

Public trees are searchable, so theoretically, you could find the name of a candidate for your great-grandfather, take a DNA test and see if you’re a match to his descendant.

DNA Ancestry seems user-friendly, with streamlined test ordering, and genetic genealogy information (including sample test result reports) linked on the right side of the home page. You also can listen to Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, Ancestry.com’s chief family historian and co-author (with Ann Turner) of Trace Your Roots With DNA (Rodale, $14.95), talk about genetic genealogy on NPR.

People who get tested with DNA Ancestry are automatically notified of matches in its DNA database. You’ll be able to enter results from other labs in the database, which isn’t yet available but will be free.

Of course, you’ll want to take the site’s marketing with a grain of salt. An ad on Ancestry.com says “Looking for your ancestors? Just say ‘aah.’” Kind of gives the impression you take a test and boom, you know your missing ancestor’s name and place of birth.

Yes, you might take a test and immediately learn you unquestionably match a cousin who knows your family history back to the Dark Ages. But we’re not to the point where that’s possible for all. You’ll probably need to plug your test results into several databases before finding a match, and those matches may be iffy enough that you have to do more genealogical research before you can say for sure whether and how you’re related.

You can get more details on DNA Ancestry on its FAQ page and blog. Look in an upcoming Family Tree Magazine for our article featuring answers to genealogists' pressing genetic genealogy questions.

For our January 2008 issue, contributing editor Rick Crume wrote an article about methods for scanning family photographs—a process that often can be tedious and time-consuming. One option Rick describes in the article is batch photo-scanning services. You ship off your pictures to the company, which then scans and delivers your digital images and originals in just a few days. These services are economical, too; you can get up to 1,000 photos digitized for as little as $50.

The catch, of course, is you have to let your pictures out of your possession. If you’re like me, you might not feel so comfortable entrusting your precious memories to UPS or the postal service. So this type of service might not be the best choice for irreplaceable historical photos.

On the other hand, if you don’t scan or otherwise copy your favorite photos—from yesterday and today—you risk losing them should they become victims of a flood, fire or even the family dog. If you have duplicates of photos, batch scanning seems like an ideal solution for getting them digititzed.

In addition to photographic prints, many services will also scan 35 mm slides and negatives. Depending on the service, you can get your scans on a CD, DVD, USB drive or even have them stored online.

Here’s a sampling of the services we’ve found. Know of any others? Post a comment.

You also get a sense of the research that goes into each photo analysis. Maureen draws on her burgeoning library of obscure reference books; guides to historical uniforms, clothing, accessories, fraternal insignia, artifacts and other items that show up in our ancestors’ photographs; a closetful of antique photos; other historians' insights; and a store of knowledge that comes from studying history and analyzing thousands of images over the years.

News from The Generations Network about its Family Tree Maker software and AncestryPress service:

The company still plans to release a Family Tree Maker 2008 update this month, calling it a “top priority.” It’ll include fixes for program crashes, data corruption, import and merge bugs, Internet corruption issues, and report complaints (version 2008 lacked some reports, including the all-in-one Genealogy Report, from previous versions).

Ancestry’s blog also has a long list of users’ desired features and their status (for example, in the October update, being considered for future updates, not being considered). Take a look and let us know if your most fervently wished-for update is there!

We’ve heard speculation that some reports were missing from the software because manufacturers were releasing the AncestryPress self-publishing service.

It takes information from your Ancestry Family Tree (which you can create free) or your Family Tree Maker 2008 data (choose to keep it personal if you don’t want it publicly viewable in Ancestry Trees) and creates pages that include illustrated family tree charts, timelines and family group sheets. Then you customize the book with text, images, backgrounds and more.

You can print the book from home, making the service free, or have Ancestry print a book up to 100 pages on nice, glossy paper and bind it with a professional-looking cover. The AncestryPress site was irritatingly unhelpful, though, in giving no discernible prices for ordering a book through AncestryPress. I’ve sent off an e-mailed question; I’ll let you know when I hear.

You also can keep your book project stored in AncestryPress and invite others to view it online. There’s no way to download it, though.

City slickers may or may not know brand books show the identifying symbols more than 42,000 Utah ranchers branded onto their livestock (ouch!). Ranchers had to register their brands and ear marks with the state agriculture department.

Books from about 1849 to 1930 are digitized, with images linked to a full text search and name index. Each entry in the brand book can include an illustration of the brand, the name and county of the person registering it, registration date, and the location on the animal’s body.

• At your next Family History Center (FHC) visit, you can log your finds on its computers using the same commercial software or utility you have at home. Or, you can try out a new program—free. Here are the programs newly available on FHC computers:

Genealogy software

Ancestral Quest

RootsMagic

Legacy Family Tree

Genealogy utilities

Personal Historian (helps you write about your family)

Family Atlas (creates maps based on your family data)

Map My Family Tree (creates maps based on your family data)

Genelines (helps you create ancestral timelines)

Pedigree Analysis (submit your family file for research advice)

PAFWiz 2.0 (add-on tools for for Personal Ancestral File)

PAF Insight (performs advanced functions for LDS church members using Personal Ancestral File)

PAF Companion 5.2 (generates reports for Personal Ancestral File)

Check out the January 2008 Family Tree Magazine, on newsstands Nov. 13, for our software panel test results of four popular programs.

The interviews cataloged on Experiencing the War don’t appear in The War, but they’ll add to what you see on TV. The site groups WWII vets’ interviews to correspond to the series’ seven episodes. You get a photo and vital stats for each veteran, then you can watch the whole interview or selected clips.

If you're more of a page turner than a clicker, WWII stories from the VHP also appear in the new Library of Congress World War II Companion by Margaret E Wagner, Linda Barrett Osborne and Susan Reyburn (Simon & Schuster, $45), along with narrative, photos, maps and charts.

See the VHP Web site to browse stories from other wars back to World War I. You also can get information on participating in the VHP by contributing your own wartime experiences, interviewing a veteran or donating war-related letters and journals.